Disaster Response

We don’t wait for the wind to blow or a disaster to strike before we do something.
We prepare beforehand.

So when the sirens do sound – we are ready.

READINESS

This is the work that goes on before a disaster strikes, before anything shows up in the news. Staff and volunteers at our Operations Hub prepare and stockpile supplies like our Ready Relief Boxes and Heart to Heart Care Kits. The Mobile Medical Unit – a rolling urgent care facility – is stocked with medicines and supplies and made ready to roll out at short notice.

RESPONSE

Now is not the time for delay. Once a disaster occurs, we must move quickly. Depending on the needs of a community a HHI Disaster Response can take many forms – shipping aid and supplies, deploying staff and volunteers, mobilizing the MMU – and sometimes a combination of all.

Keep us prepared to respond.Donate Now to our Disaster Readiness and Response fund.

RECENT DISASTER RESPONSES

2014

April Tornado Outbreak

Forecasters warned it was going to be bad. They had it right on the money. In April 2014, a multitude of tornadoes ripped across the mid-South and South. While relief supplies were packaged for shipment to a town in Mississippi, a HHI Disaster Response Team delivered hundreds of hygiene kits and thousands of sunscreen tubes to people in communities on the outskirts of Little Rock, Arkansas.

2013

Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda

Shortly after the strongest tropical cyclone to ever make landfall struck the central Philippines we mounted our largest international relief operation in years. Issuing an international call for volunteers, we deployed nearly three dozen medical providers to work in makeshift clinics treating more than 3,000 people in the aftermath of the typhoon. We also shipped more than 44 tons of medical aid, food and survival supplies to be distributed to survivors. Read more about our Typhoon Relief Operation in the Philippines.

Moore, Oklahoma Tornado

Within hours of an EF-5 tornado tearing apart homes and a medical center, our Mobile Medical Unit was on site in Moore. For the next few weeks, staff and volunteers worked from the MMU providing medical care for storm survivors and rescue personnel, and leading medical teams home to home.

2012

Superstorm Sandy

Two days after Heart to Heart International celebrated its 20th Anniversary, the MMU was on its way to the Northeast and we were preparing to send shipments of relief aid in the wake of Sandy. While the MMU was based at shelters in Long Island and staffed by local doctors and nurses, the shipments of aid began arriving in communities in New Jersey and New York.